Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday August 17, 2012 @12:37PM
from the nothing-lasts-forever dept.

New submitter samnorsk writes "I've long been a lifetime account holder of an old textdrive (now Joyent) cloud hosting account. I remember purchasing the account back in college for a few hundred bucks when I really didn't have the money to spend. At the time, I thought that the opportunity to have a persistent lifetime shell / web hosting account would be valuable. This would be a resource I could fall back on no matter what my current situation was. Now, I just received an email stating that Joyent intends to shut down my lifetime account. Quoting: 'We appreciate and value you as one of Joyent's lifetime Shared Hosting customers. As this service is one of our earliest offerings, and has now run its course, your lifetime service will end on October 31, 2012.' They do offer a 512MB cloud machine for one year, but presumably if we don't take that, we're done. In any case, our lifetime commitment would still be dropped in one year if we take that offer. How is it fair or legal for a 'lifetime account' to end when it is no longer convenient for the company? For reference, this was the original offer. In it, they state: 'How long is it good for? As long as we exist.'"

In many cases, judges have ruled that the changes cannot be so unbalanced towards one side. "No longer providing a service you have already paid for without any compensation" sounds like a case that would most likely result in this.

I'm not a lawyer, but he may have a case. Joyent may in fact already know this and calculated it cheaper to settle on offering a lifetime account again --on a per user basis--. The idea betting on all other account holders shrugging it off. In the end, Joyent saves money.

We're pleased to announce a special offer that combines three great products in our family -- TextDrive, Strongspace and Joyent -- available for a one-time payment of just $499.

Want to try that again?

2. Whose lifetime? The service's, i.e. no shorter than its lifetime.

What they said was

As long as we exist.

The thing is, even though TextDrive, Inc. no longer exists, "three products in our family" and including two products other than TextDrive makes the offer explicitly from the parent company Joyent, Inc. The same company which still hosts the article author's site.

Also, I just went cross-eyed in the ToS. I saw no provision that said they could terminate or otherwise suspend this service or promise. They are allowed to if someone violates the ToS, but I don't see anything about updating or changing the ToS being allowed.

IANAL and YMMV, but I think there could be a standing for a class-action action here.

Not true at all. You can buy a company's assets and none of their liabilities. It's called a "bulk sale of assets". How this is done varies by state, but it's done all the time. Is it fair? That's another story and a problem for liability holders. It's also one of the problems with corporate law and how it's unevenly applied across jurisdictions.

We know nothing of the terms of the sale until we see the terms of the sale. Bulk sales are like bankruptcies. The laws vary. IANAL, but I've seen bulk assets shed contract liabilities to an empty corporate shell, where a suit against that shell is meaningless.

Duty? We're talking corporations here. That's how liabilities are shed. I don't like the idea either. I'm a 99%er, but I understand the 1% very thoroughly.

A fitness centre near here sold "lifetime memberships" and after 5 years, cancelled them. They duly got taken to court and the judge ruled in favour of the fitness centre. You might possibly be able to argue that if the supplier had known at the time of selling these "lifetime" products that they would withdraw them after a short time, there was a fraud, or mis-seling, or false advertising - but it would be difficult to prove and probably not the case, anyway.

This is just another phrase that changes its meaning where money and profit are involved. Just like "unlimited" (broadband), "free speech" and "our customers are important to us".

If you would like to speak to the judge, you can find him at the fitness center every Friday night, using his free gold pass.

This seems like a scam to me. The reason you pay the outrageously high "life" prices of ~$1000 is because over the longterm (say: 15 years) it's cheaper than the annual rate (~$100). It's a bargain plus your loyalty is being rewarded.

For companies to discontinue the membership means they actually charged MORE per year than the annual rate. If I did that I'd be called a scam artist like Mr. Charles Ponzi, but if corporations do it then it's somehow okay.

Never buy lifetime memberships. They are scams -- where do they get the money to keep business ging several years down the road? They haven't invested the money, I assure you. They have spent it.

The business model is to take your money, party rock hard, then go out of business. This was the fraudulent business model of many fitness clubs when they exploded in popularity in the late 70s thru early 80s.

When I see new MMORPGs with monthly pay-to-play offering "lifetime pass" options, I run for the hills, even as suckers sign up, fancying themselves getting a deal.

Well, in case of going out of business, or shutting down an MMO, the "as long as we exist" clause would kick in. This is a case of the CEO admitting "we would have to upgrade the hardware providing the service, and we don't want to do that". Some lawyers will make a lot of money of it, and the victims will get a $10 off coupon.

I bought a lifetime TiVo DVR service about 12 years ago and DirecTV STILL honors it on their DirecTV-branded DVRs. If you can see that the lifetime is cheaper than about 2 years worth of service, I'd say it's worth the risk. As it goes, I paid $250 to save $10/month for 12 years.

Doesn't matter. These folks made sure they had a "get out of jail free [archive.org]" card. Starting and certainly not ending with a waiving of right to sue in favor of arbitration, and an attempt to get out of any legal encumberments pursuant to the "Interstate Commerce Clause".

TextDrive, Inc shall not be liable for delays or defaults. TextDrive, Inc shall not be liable for delays or defaults in furnishing goods or services hereunder, if such delays or defaults on the part of TextDrive, Inc are due to:
Acts of God or of a public enemy;
Acts of the United States or any state or political subdivision thereof;
Fires, severe weather, floods, earthquakes, natural disasters, explosions or other catastrophes;
Embargoes, epidemics or quarantine restrictions;
Shortage of goods, labor strikes, slowdowns, differences with workmen or labor stoppages of any kind;
Delays of supplier or delay of transportation for any reason;
Causes beyond the control of TextDrive, Inc. in furnishing items or services including, but not limited to, breakdown or failure of machinery or equipment, or delay in Client reporting problems or furnishing information or materials. Acceptance of delivery of goods or services shall constitute a waiver and release of TextDrive, Inc by Client for any claim for damages, setoff, discount or other liability on account of delay.

Agreed, nothing in the TOS talks about cancellation, and given the boilerplate nature of such things, me thinks they can cancel it if they want. Besides, how much money are you going to spend to fight them in court? Me thinks, not much.

And more importantly, how many other people are in your situation? Me thinks not many.

'Not Much' + 'Not Many' = you get to find another solution. And of course rightfully bitch about them publicly:)

I'd file in small claims court for the original amount paid. If they don't send a representative you win a default judgement and send them a letter including the court document link. If they don't pay you turn them over to a collection agency (trust me NO company wants a collection agency showing up in a credit report).

This guy paid for something and didn't get it. There is a pretty obvious and quantifiable loss that happened and he should be able to get his money back. This is pretty much the definition of the right kind of thing to sue over. Its not emotional damage or coffee on the crotch or hurting yourself when your robbing someones house or whatever nonsense people get on with. Its a real tort.

For the last time...that 'coffee on the crotch' thing people hold up as the prime example of frivolous lawsuits was probably the most justified lawsuit this country has ever seen.

The woman had fucking third-degree burns throughout her crotch and thighs. A surgeon had to literally rebuild her labia and vagina. Hundreds of people had received second and third degree burns from McDonald's coffee in the years leading up to the suit, including instances when employees spilled the coffee on patrons. McDonald's specifically acknowledged even before that particular incident that the coffee was dangerously hot and unfit for consumption at the time of sale, yet still made a firm and specific corporate policy of setting every coffee maker to that temperature.

It was categorical, institutional recklessness that severely injured hundreds of people over more than a decade, but when one woman actually sues and wins over this everyone dismisses her as a cash-grabbing crackpot. That's what lawsuits are for; when some entity is fucking people over and won't respond to any other pleading or incentive.

Half of the 'frivolous' lawsuits out there are completely reasonable and proper grievances that corporations have sneakily re-framed as whiny bullshit.
Because how dare the peons think there's an even playing field for them somewhere?! Courts are for corporations to get things done, not the people! Just because some jerk sues Dairy Queen over melted ice cream - and every comedian or 'human interest' journalist in the nation takes a crack at that moron - doesn't mean you can snidely dismiss every individual vs. corporate lawsuit without a second glance.

Depends on your state. In my state, and many others, either party can ask the judge to move the case to regular court and he will. Once in regular court, you will have your ass handed to you unless you hire an expensive lawyer.

The justice system doesn't even bother pretending to be fair to the little guy anymore. The entire economic and political system on this planet is a complete and utter scam.

You can file a suit in small claims court for $10-$100 (depending on the state/county you live in). And I'd guess many of their customers are aspie types that would file a small claims suit against them.

Why would you have to be an asperger in order to sue over a $500 lifetime account that is cancelled 6 years later?

Aside from just totally going out of business, Joyent has a commitment to honor. If we don't start holding companies to their word, they will walk all over us worse than they already do.

It may sound anti-business, but it's more "don't write checks your wallet can't cash". AT&T, Verizon and Sprint have all pulled that bullshit, as well as countless other companies and then weaseled out of it in the name of marketing, once they got their customers. Consumers may not be able to hold their feet to the fire, but we can damn well make sure we minimize the number of companies that try to pull marketing scams like that to get customers.

Besides, $500 is $500 and thats no small amount of money in these economic times.

I wouldn't say aspie either, more like "miser" or "tightwad". Most people would probably figure they got more than $500 worth and move on with life.

$500 for 6 years of service comes out to about $6.94 per month. That isn't a particularly good deal. In fact, it's actually pretty darn expensive when you put a pencil to it. Much cheaper than their current hosting plans, mind you, but compared with the competition, it's highway robbery. For comparison, two bucks more per month from Dreamhost (in two-year blocks) or nearly a buck less from HostGator (in three-year blocks) gets you unlimited web storage (versus 2 GB), unlimited monthly bandwidth (versus 20 GB), unlimited databases (versus 20), and unlimited hosted domains (versus 15).

No, this isn't $500 worth. It's maybe $150-200 worth at best.

Don't know why anyone would even want "lifetime" hosting, as they're just going to leave on some crappy old hardware & depriortize your customer service unless they can get more revenue out of you.

For the kind of money they paid for the service, that's a good way to get such negative reviews that you quickly find yourself without customers.

Then again, so is dumping a large chunk of your customer base, so odds are, this company is desperate because they're struggling to pay the bills. I wouldn't trust them to host my lolcats site, much less anything that I cared about.

Small claims is probably better for the individual assuming the jurisdiction rules in their state/the state the contract was made in make it possible to file where the individual is currently living. Odds are that Joyent won't even show up so the individual wins by default. Might be best to delay pushing for actual enforcement (i.e. payment) of the court order though until any opportunity for Joyent to appeal has expired (the possibility of this as well as the timeframe would vary across states) as there's

It doesn't say anything of the sort under their Terms of Service at the time, available through the wayback link.

It says"

How long is it good for?
As long as we exist.

The original company no longer exists, and only half of the principals there of, are participants in the new owners.

Still, one wonders why he can't move all of that into a virtual machine and put the storage in his cloud. That is after all their current line of business is it not?

Unless a bankruptcy ruling released them from those lifetime commitments there is no way out, when you purchase a company you don't just purchase its assets you get everything including any commitments they made and any liabilities they have.

Wrong. People buy just the assets of companies and leave behind the debt and liabilities all the time to the original owners.

No, they don't. Barring a bankrupcy, you simply cannot just buy the assets w/o inheriting the liabilities. I'm sure a lot of people and companies would like thta to be true, but under the lawy, itt doesn't work like that at all.

You absolutely can buy the assets of a company without inheriting the liabilities. The holder of the liabilities has certain responsibilities; they can't just give the money they just got to the principals then dissolve the company and avoid its debts. But as long as the purchaser paid a fair price for the assets it's a legal transaction.

As the GP said, only if the company is bankrupt, and then you won't be buying the company, just the assets. In this case the company was bought, so there was no bankruptcy and the liabilities went to the new owner.

Did the lifetime customers receive service from Joynet after the purchase?
Again the answer is Yes for the last 7 years they have

Now we have established that Joynet purchased Textdrive, and that the customers were acquired by Joynet so please explain to me how it would be possible for joynet to claim that Textdrive sold the Lifetime customers when provided services? Or that Textdrive did not become a part of Joynet even though they were purchased by Joynet and the services remained.

But we're not talking about physical assets, we're talking about service contracts. If you assumed Joe Plumber's service contracts -- as evidenced in part of the continuation of service under those contracts -- you would be obligated by the same terms of the original contract. Alternatively it would be possible for Joe Plumber to cancel his contracts under whatever terms where therein allowed before dissolving his business, or to enter bankruptcy/dissolution and allow the contracts to be settled as part of

Sounds like the old clause: "Subject to change without notice" at work.

Wait'll Steam shuts down. Whether it's in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, if it's hosted in the cloud, it'll eventually go away. If it's hosted on your own drive, and copied to your backup drive that's in a geographically-remote location, it's yours forever.

Bankruptcy lets a company renege on its obligations. If the company goes bankrupt, the bankruptcy court gets to decide whether the company has to make good on the "promise" that you can keep accessing your games. They may very well decide that the company should pay all its money to creditors and not use any money to pay for programmers, servers, or customer service people to give you access to your games. They might decide that the company should do it anyway to avoid losing intangible goodwill value, but they by no means have to.

Forget class action- after attorney fees you will have little or nothing.

Small claims court is what you want. There are some huge advantages: 1- low cost to file. 2- attorneys are not allowed- only plaintiff and defendant. 3- if defendant does not appear, he will usually lose automatically. What's the chance that the CEO will come to your town to contest a $500 claim?

Sometimes there is difficulty collecting your judgement if, for instance, an individual skips town. This defendant is easy to find and easy to force payment from.

Usually you can only make them pay for actual costs. No 'pain and suffering' claims, etc. IANAL, check the rules where you live.

Have fun. If hundreds do the same you might actually be a nuisance to them.

If it is available or you have a copy, go over the original terms and conditions docs you got when you purchased it. Unless there's weasel-wording in there (there likely is), you can possibly take them to small-claims court for at least the money you initially paid.

From their terms of service [archive.org] at the time of the offer, remedies are limited to refund of the amount paid and disputes over $250 must be arbitrated. "Lifetime" is not defined but their offer clearly says "as long as we exist" and they do still exist. If it were me, I would go for the refund and be thankful for 6 years of free use.

Usually when a company buys another company, they are obligated by law to assume company one's contractual obligations. For example Saturn Car Company may no longer exist but its parent GM must still provide warranty service & 20 years of stock parts under the law. (Ditto with Plymouth which does not exist but Chrysler... and later Daimler-Chrysler... must still continue warranty service & parts.)

BTW I wouldn't make a big deal about the refund. If the company refuses to refund $499, then negotiate a refund of half that, plus a free account on their current service. It's not worth the effort to goto small-claims court over a tiny $249. (Of course if they refuse to refund Any money then I'd file the claim.)

Bingo.
Wish I had mod points for you. His agreement was with Joyent. I do not believe the new owners have to honor that agreement as Joyent no longer exists.

Absolutely Not, the only way to get out of that agreement is a refund or bankruptcy, you can't just buy the assets when you buy a company, liabilities and commitments both are transferred to the purchasing company. Before the Rickets bought the Cubs the Cubs filed for Bankruptcy so that any liens from the Tribune could not follow the Cubs to their new owner. When Fiat bought Chrysler they still have to honor all commitments that were not wiped in the bankruptcy pensions, warranties, loans all were honored if the bankruptcy didn't release them from it. If the world worked the way you think it does I could get a loan from the bank for my LLC then sell the company to my brother for $1 but the debt would not follow and since it was an LLC I would not be personally held liable and my brother would get the pile of cash.

If you have to deal with a lawyer or go to court, you've already lost. Going down that path suggests your time is totally worthless, as is your money.

I don't see why more people don't think of something as simple as responding with a polite request for a refund. Is it really worth their time to deal with bad PR and the deluge of hate emails/calls to their support people from a bunch of annoyed/.ers? Hint: it's really easy to waste many thousands of dollars on dealing with annoyed customers. There's got to be a limited number of people who have the lifetime product, so there's a finite amount that refunds would cost the company to get out of the deal with the least hassle.

I'm basing the "already lost" comment on experience with two of my mom's cases. She prevailed in both cases, one in small claims and one via arbitration, but the time and effort that went into both was far in excess of a couple of hours. It's a part time job for a few weeks for people who don't have the experience with the process and need to learn on the fly.

I wholeheartedly agree that the affected users are entitled to a refund. However, I'm always amazed that people will suggest calling lawyers, takin

They're voluntarily discontinuing the service, they should be willing to pay the $499 back to those who ask for it.

Plus interest. If they only pay back the original sum they've converted the lifetime offer into an interest free loan, under false pretenses, for their benefit. And that's not even accounting for inflation.

The deal implies that you're SOL if they go out of business. In that case, backing up your data has always been your problem. I pay $20/year for 20GB of storage from Amazon. You can make up all sorts of reasons they're bad people, but why not get the $499 back, move on and go somewhere else. That's almost 25 years of service for more space from Amazon, so that seems like the path with the least wasted time.

Pretty sure that it's not binding in California. I seem to remember that California amended their consumer protection act to get around the arbitration thing. Though, to a point class action for such a small amount of money are useless. Small claims are better, you'll almost certainly get the full amount of the money back. And you'll recoup the filing costs as well. You don't need a lawyer, you can present all the information yourself to the judge. And on the upside, if they don't show, it's an automa

I think this statement is fairly clear as to the definition of "lifetime". No they could re-incorporate, etc so that the old "they" no longer exists, but otherwise... I'd say that its time for a lawsuit, or at least start by having a lawyer-friend draft a simple letter that threatens a lawsuit...

The link points to the original offer, which does not qualify the offer at all. That offer does have links to a FAQ, an Acceptable Use page, and a Terms of Service page. The FAQ link is dead, while the Terms of Service is specific to one of the parts of the offer that was priced monthly and thus doesn't acknowledge a Lifetime Offer.

It does look like you got 6 years of bundled service for $500, which might be perceived as a reasonable value compared to the services individually on a month-by-month basis, tho

Well, I read the archived FAQ and TOS and I didn't see any disclaimers. Technically, a company that lists something like a lifetime guarantee or lifetime warranty can get away with only warrantying or guaranteeing the product or service for its market life. Meaning my frying pan with a lifetime warranty is good for what the company deems the lifetime of the frying pan, modified by federal and local laws on what constitutes an acceptable minimum lifetime period. On the other hand, the ad you linked via the Wayback Machine didn't say lifetime, but rather the life of the company. If they've been bought and changed hands they could be considered a new company. Either way, I'd say there certainly seems to be the possibility that they could be legally liable for breach of contract. Just make sure if you decide to take them to small claims court that there's no activity in your own history with their service that violates their TOS and Acceptable Use provisions, because they can use that against you.

They are obviously saying that they are coming to kill you on 10/31 (and presumably anybody else whose service needs to be terminated). That is the only way out for them - let the rest of us beware of "lifetime" agreements!

In the workplace we have learned to trust our employers just for the duration of the current project, if at all. Why would you now expect a faceless entity run by weasels to be any different?

I have learned this also the hard way. I once bought a Peugeot bicycle with a lifetime warranty for the frame, which duly broke a few years after. I first wrote Peugeot, and they pointed me at their French headquarters. I wrote them, even in French, and was referred to the bike dealer, where the circle continued. Long story short: I never got anything for my warranty besides the inflated price for the bike and the lesson what a lifetime warranty is *really* worth these days.

I will never again buy something again from Peugeot, but they sure couldn't care less. The government covers their losses anyway.

Long story short: I never got anything for my warranty besides the inflated price for the bike and the lesson what a lifetime warranty is *really* worth these days.

So, they gave you your money back, adjusted for inflation? And that money covered the price of the whole bike, and not just the frame? If so, that sounds pretty reasonable. What more could they do (other than perhaps compensate you for the time it took to get them to honor their warranty)?

It sounds to me like they're struggling financially and are trying to convert all of you "lifetime" folks back into monthly paying members so they can pay their bills. My guess is that for a measly half a gig you could find a much better deal elsewhere and a lot of very annoyed people are probably going to do exactly that. There is a good chance this company won't exist in a year regardless, and this is just giving you a head start on finding a new cloud hosting company.

If there were less regulations on the industry then this company would never be able to do this. Your best bet is to vote for Ron Paul and to hope that in the future we will have a free enough market that companies will honor their contracts without having to screw their customers because of government regulation.

The exclusive remedy against Company for any damages whatsoever to Customer arising out of or related to this Agreement shall be the refund of the fees paid by Customer to Company with respect to the then current term of this Agreement

Email them, politely requesting a full refund. They entered into a contract with you to provide service for "as long as they exist." They are attempting to unilaterally modify the terms of the agreement. While companies often try to grant themselves the right to modify a contract at will, courts have found this to be an unreasonable practice. See Douglas v. Talk America - (http://pub.bna.com/eclr/0675424_071807.pdf ) Should the company fail to respond, investigate filing a case in small claims court requesting a full refund plus interest and reasonable expenses. You may run into difficulty if you reside outside the State of California, because you agreed to undertake all legal action in that state when you signed up. That said, you can include the cost of travel in your suit. You'd have to do a bit of research before filing, but I suspect the company would chose to issue a refund instead of dealing with the hassle of a small claims appearance.

This is what class action suits are for. Do you think the executives are taking any cuts or are they paying themselves huge bonuses for how smart they are. This is a classic MBA style move. They might save a few bucks and it looked good on a spread sheet; but now I have labeled Joyent as a waste product in my head. Thus if at some future time I am shopping for a replacement for my present hosting I would just strike Joyent off the list. Before this I had never heard of them. Good PR Job Joyent.

If a company promises life-time and spell out what they mean by it, then they should be held accountable on the terms defined. Then again in all reality, there is no such thing as a life-time account, just as in life there are no guarantees.

If you aren't hosting your own service, then be ready to be kicked out when the landlord decides to kick you out, but at the same time they should a) be abiding to the terms of services and b) giving you sufficient time to find an alternative provider. One month is *very

I don't know what to say to the original poster, but I know of a matchmaking site that used to offer a "lifetime" membership. Think about it. How pessimistic are you if you buy a lifetime membership to a matchmaking site?

Signed up for guaranteed lifetime rate. Received notice that program was being terminated, and could sign up for limited contrct at different rate. Left for another gym.

Signed up for lifetime guaranteed rate. Gym sold to another company with new signs put up overnight, new company would not honor membership. I have both left for another gym and negotiated a reasonable rate.

Signed up for limited contract at guaranteed rate. Gym closed, re-opened under new ownership, new ownership would not honor membership. Mostly left for another gym.

Signed up for a lifetime guranteed rate, informed my contract was cancelled when the card used for payment expired and gym did not notify me my payments were not being made. Required to pay past due balance with penalties, resign for new higher rate. Ignored new rate, paid past due and refused penalties, left for another gym.

Most recently, signed up for lifetime guaranteed rate, suspended membership, notified that it was cancelled for non use. Required to resign with initiaition fee, higher rate, different terms. Refused, kept original contract and pointed to the paragraph where it was lifetime, no disclaimer for non use. Contract reinstated with dirty looks from the manager for a year until he got an offer he could not refuse.

I doubt you'll get satisfaction, but they have several ways to legally avoid this. I would try to negotiate something like a minimal yearly fee, and when they offer a contract, ask them how this one is any more binding than the last one... And it is highly likely that they are doing this because they are losing money on those lifetime deals. The worst-case resolution is for them to go out of business, and leave you with not even your old data.

Don't take the refund unless they give you the investment plus a fair rate of interest over the intervening years. Time value of money. Even that is still doing them a favor considering the future years they have stolen from you, but I suppose it's better than a kosh on the head in a dark alley.

I am sure I will get a lot of flack just because how my subject line reads, but, looking at the track record of oline services, it is never a good idea to buy into any kind of cloud/web service, by paying your hard earned cash. I have been bitten by the now-defunct sunrocket.com VoIP service, which was supposed to cost me $200 for 2 years and after my 7th month they went belly up with no recourse for me to recoup my money. So I paid $200 for 7 months of VoIP service at the time. And there were much cheaper alternatives available when I got into this situation. The original poster is in a better position than I was, because he has an entity to sue and get some of their money back. How much is a question to be answered by small claims courts of California, but still, it is better than nothing. And this is exactly the reason why I refuse to pay for any service which is running on the goodwill of a person or few people, residing on the cloud. It is very easy for these outfits to disband themselves and ride into sunset with your money. $10 per year for a simple service may not be much but in principle, if I am making a contract to earn that money, I want to see the same from any service provider, to whom I will hand out any tangible object to acquire their service. And last but not the least, some half-baked, hare-brained ideas of 20-something year olds without much business understanding (which this particular case definitely sounded like one) is never a good idea to buy into, at any capacity, paid or not. I will be happy to give some of my screen real estate to ads, if the service is good enough to warrant some use from me. At least, when they disappear, I don't have to deal with financial losses. And to the original poster : What were you thinking when you aere shelling ot half a grand from your already non-existent funds, to sign up for such an ephemeral service ? Really, I don't see the value in the premise. I mean 2 months after they take your $500, they could have disappeared and you could have nothing to show for that loss. And I love the TechCrunch'es take "It's not about the money". To the people who did not lose money on a deal, it is never about the money. But for people like me, regardless how much money I make, I am pissed off if someone walks away with my $500 or even much less. And yes it *IS* about the money. Things like this, make my blood boil. Thanks for reading my rant, if you lasted this long.

This is the full ToS from TextDrive from when this offer was available:

TextDrive Terms of Service

The following terms and conditions (these “Terms”) govern the provision by TEXTDRIVE, INC. (“Company”) of the services and/or products (referred collectively herein as “Services and Products”) described on the Server Order Form, the Service Level Agreement and Service Exhibit attached hereto (collectively the “Service Descriptions”) and defined in any of the Company’s product support listing, to the customer (“Customer”) identified on the Service Descriptions. The Service Descriptions, these Terms and the attachments and any addenda hereto, executed with respect to the Services and Products, are referred to herein, collectively, as this “Agreement.”

Our Hosting ServicesMaximum Hard Disk Space. Customer will be provided with the amount of disk space stated in either their dedicated quote or corresponding plan from http://textdrive.com/plans/ [textdrive.com]. Disk space and usage are monitored by TextDrive, Inc., when possible quotas are soft and responsible overages should not impair Customer’s ability to access said disk space. Customers are responsible for purchasing additional disk space beyond that detailed in their “Plan” or to remove files in order to bring their usage with their Plans’s limit.Jurisdiction and Jurisdictional Disputes. TextDrive Inc is a California corporation. The parties recognize that TextDrive, Inc is under the legal jurisdiction of the State of California, and US federal law. The parties expressly recognize that, where TextDrive, Inc. is acting solely as Customer’s Host, TextDrive, Inc. is not engaged in, and is not actively soliciting, interstate or international commerce for said Customer. Where TextDrive, Inc. is a named party to any type of dispute or litigation involving any acts by Customer that affect out-of-state persons or entities, Customer agrees that it shall indemnify, hold TextDrive Inc. harmless, defend TextDrive, Inc. and challenge the jurisdiction of out of state authorities over TextDrive, Inc.Storage, Backups and Internet Link. TextDrive Inc. shall store Customer’s Web Sites and Email messages on TextDrive Inc’s servers. The parties expressly recognize that Internet servers and links are susceptible to crashes and down time. TextDrive, Inc. warrants that it shall maintain a consistent link with the Internet, but TextDrive, Inc. cannot and does not warrant that it shall maintain a continuous and uninterrupted link. However, TextDrive, Inc does pass through the following Service Level Agreement from it’s Managed Hosting Provider (NextLevel Internet, Inc. of San Diego, California) and that is 100% Power Uptime and 100% Network Uptime. TextDrive Inc. does monitor all services on our servers at minimum of 5-minute intervals.Bandwidth. TextDrive, Inc agrees that it shall maintain a 100Mbps connection to each server, however, TextDrive, Inc. does not warrant any response rate or download time beyond it’s control, as this is depending on Customer’s and End Users ISP connections.Maintenance. TextDrive Inc. may, at its own discretion, temporarily suspend all service for the purpose of repair, maintenance or improvement of any of its systems. However, TextDrive, Inc. shall provide prior notice where it is reasonably practicable under the circumstances, and shall restore service as soon as is reasonably practicable. Customer shall not be entitled to any setoff, discount, refund or other credit, in case of any service outage which is beyond TextDrive Inc’s control or which is reasonable in duration.Security. The parties expressly recognize that it is impossible to maintain flawless security, but TextDrive, Inc. shall take reasonable steps to prevent security breaches in server interactions with Customer and security breaches in TextDrive Inc’s server interaction with resource

I'm not usually someone to make waves, but is my single little shared server with 2-3 domains pointed to it (that receive a few hundred hits a month) really impacting your bottom line enough to justify breaching the deal that we agreed to way back in the beginning?? If anything it costs you significantly less to maintain that service for my one account now than it did in 2006.

The goodwill that offers like the Mixed Grill and your excellent service and customer support have earned you have been reciprocated by me (and other Mixed Grill customers) over the years in the glowing reviews that we have given you, increasing your customer base. If the other Mixed Grill users have been anything like me, they have recommended you to friends, coworkers, and business associates. They have probably enjoyed watching your company become the leading company to use Solaris and OpenSolaris technologies and they have probably been in awe of your advances with ZFS (as Strongspace), zones (with Shared Accelerators and now SmartOS), and they have been your biggest fans. I will bet that you have made a lot more money off of the Mixed Grill users than we have cost you. If the experience of Oracle with OpenSolaris has taught you anything, keeping the goodwill of your long-term fans and supporters is the most important resource that you have. Oracle learned the hard way that alienating your die-hard fans for short-term profit will probably hurt you in the long run.

I urge you to rethink this decision, and approach the original Mixed Grill customers as fans and supporters, and let us keep our little Shared Accelerators, or just migrate us to SmartOS instances without charge and let us continue to enjoy the great service that you are known for, all under the spirit of the original agreement.

However, the reference to something coming in February 2006 implies they've been in business for over 6 years. That suggests that if they're smart, they just refund the $499 to anyone who asks, or offer them double in future service credits. How long would $1000 worth of service credits last?

Wrong. If a company does not provide the goods or services that they sold you, in this case, a lifetime account, that's illegal in the US. There aren't even any shady "subject to change" clauses in the original ToS.

If I, as a company, were to sell you a lifetime of free car repair for $5,000 today, and then tomorrow say I was not going to do it anymore, even though I wasn't shutting down, simply because I felt that the service had 'run its course', then that would be illegal. This is no different.